


"The Well Of Forever," From The Psi Cop's POV

by pallasite



Series: Behind the Gloves [88]
Category: Babylon 5, Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms, Crusade
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, EABI, EarthDome, EarthForce, Episode: s01e03 The Well of Forever, Fix-It, Gen, Politics, Psi Cops, Psi Corps, Telepath War, Worldbuilding, gideon is a dick, technomages, telepaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 10:59:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12982629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite
Summary: Some prisons have no walls.The prologue ofBehind the Glovesishere- please read!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **The order of events here follows the Revised Broadcast Order.**
> 
> What is this series? Where are the acknowledgements, table of contents and universe timelines? See [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10184558/chapters/22620590).
> 
> If you like _Behind the Gloves_ and would like to send me an email, I can be reached at counterintuitive at protonmail dot com. Do you have questions? Would you like to tell me what you like about this project? Email me!
> 
> I also have an [ask blog](https://behind-the-gloves.tumblr.com/), a [writing blog](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/pallasite-writes), and a "P3 life" Tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/p3-life) with funny anecdotes. :)

2267\. Syria Planum, Mars. Two years after the Telepath War.

Senator Rosaki’s face appeared on the screen in Morgan’s Mars office, her dark red hair now faded mostly to silver, her brown eyes undimmed of their steel and fire.

An encrypted channel, priority gold. This was important.

“I need your help,” she said flatly. “And off the record.”

“I’m at your service.”

He despised that it was true.

“Ever since EarthForce made that bone-headed decision to let telepaths become officers,” the senator began, “the public’s been killing me. Have you seen the coverage on ISN?”

The question was rhetorical – the “telepath question” had been on the EA news almost every single night since the Senate had disbanded the Corps two years before. Rosaki’s committee – the Committee on Metasensory Abilities, which had once overseen the Corps – had been taking a beating on all sides for its handling of telepath “integration.” The only bigger story was, of course, the Drakh Plague, killing millions back on Earth every month. A strict quarantine had been set up around the planet.

“A narrow majority supports telepaths enlisting, and that I can see,” the senator continued. “But officers? The public is terrified, and rightly so. If this isn’t stopped immediately, normals will have to take orders from teeps. Do you hear me?”

Morgan nodded.

The senator continued. “EarthForce may be run by idiots, but the public doesn’t care who fucked up, they still expect me to fix it, because the buck stops with me – or at least it should.”

“What are the Joint Chiefs saying?” Morgan asked.

She sighed. “They’re split. Half cautiously support this little experiment, and the other half are silent in public, and furious behind closed doors. I’m with them. This move will only harm unit cohesion. There have already been attacks on enlisted telepaths – if teeps ever get in command, we might see a mutiny. We already fought one goddamn war to take military power out of the hands of telepaths-” Morgan winced inside, “-and now we give it back, with the EarthForce stamp of approval? Over my dead body we will.”

Morgan began to suspect the reason for the gold channel. And he didn’t expect to have the good fortune of watching Rosaki drop dead of the Drakh Plague.

“That’s where you come in.”

“This is about Lt. Matheson, isn’t it?”

Many telepaths had enlisted in EarthForce in the last two years – in no small part because most other jobs were still closed to them – but John Matheson alone had been promoted to the rank of lieutenant.

“Damn right it is,” Rosaki spat. “Captain Gideon’s a fool. I’ve met chimpanzees with more brains than him, but he’s a persistent son of a bitch. He insisted on Matheson for his second in command, and talked Senator McQuate[1] into letting him have the teep as a little feather in his cap… such a good boy, that Gideon, embracing integration with open arms. I could throw up. So now what do we have? A telepath who’s only a heartbeat away from command of an EarthForce ship, a teep who, only two years ago, was a mid-level bureaucrat in Psi Corps. The public knows it, and they’re killing me, Morgan.”

Morgan nodded. He wished they would literally do it.

“Matheson’s biannual compliance scan is coming up this week,” the senator continued, “and I want you to do it, personally, not the dumb kid they sent out last time. I can arrange things with the Bureau. Whatever dirt he’s got on him, I want you to find it. I want Matheson recalled to Earth and court-martialed. I want a big public spectacle. The voters will see I’m being proactive about the problem, they’ll have confidence in my committee again. And EarthForce will have no choice but to revoke their absurd policy.”

It would also be a death sentence for Matheson, Morgan knew, unless a cure for the plague was found.

Morgan nodded. “I know you’re confident on what I’ll discover in his mind, senator, but… consider for a moment… what if he’s clean?”

She looked at him with annoyance and disbelief. “No teep is clean,” she snapped. “Not possible. I wrote the new regulations myself. I’m not stupid.”

“But what if-”

“-if he’s clean, then plant it. You were a Psi Cop, I know what you can do. I know what you did, during the war. And I want his ass back on Earth. Don’t get smart with me, Morgan Butely, I arranged your plea bargain. You owe me your life.”

Morgan swallowed a lump in this throat. “Yes senator.”

“Matheson. Get me Matheson.”

 

[1] Actual canon name of the Senator who Gideon talked into letting him keep Matheson as a pet – er, as “first officer.”


	2. Chapter 2

_Gideon really can’t have the intelligence of a chimp_ , Morgan reflected, as his official Bureau shuttle docked with the _EAS Excalibur_ , Gideon’s ship. _EarthForce put him in charge of an expedition to find a cure for the Drakh Plague. That’s a lot of responsibility._

He decided Rosaki must be exaggerating, blowing off some steam.

His appointment with Matheson wasn’t until 18:00 hours ship time, so after docking, he remained in his shuttle, doing paperwork. His caseload of compliance scans sometimes reached ten a day now, back on Mars or out in the colonies. The scans themselves weren’t so bad – for him, at least – but good lord, the paperwork was killing him. A one minute scan sometimes left him with hours of forms to complete and reports to file.

He reviewed Matheson’s file.

Raised in Canada, Matheson came from a strictly Roman Catholic normal family and had entered the Corps at thirteen. At only a P6, he had landed a comfortable but unremarkable position in mid-level administration. On the final day of the war, he’d been working in the Corps’ strategic command center when it was bombed by rogue telepaths, killing almost everyone inside – including Morgan’s wife. Matheson had been one of only a handful to reach the shuttles and escape.

Lucky son of a bitch.

Morgan got up to go find his quarry. _I’ll be out of here in an hour,_ he told himself. _Let’s just get this over with._

But he hadn’t taken more than a few steps down the corridor of the _Excalibur_ before he knew something was terribly wrong. The crew was in a panic – and not about his presence, either.

“Off the beacon?!” he heard one crewmember exclaim, with horror. “No no, Nikolai, you don’t mean that.”

“I saw it myself!”

Morgan froze in his tracks and looked over at the crewmembers, who, for their part, were too involved in their conversation to even notice him and his psi insignia briefcase.

Mortal terror.

He knew that feeling intimately.

“Has the captain lost his mind?! We’ll be lost forever!”

“We’re off the beacon,” replied Nikolai. “And we’re not turning around.”

A small crowd gathered. Everyone knew the _Excalibur_ was all alone, far from any other ships.

“Sweet mother of God, Gideon’s gone mad. He’s going to kill us. We’re going to drift until we starve or asphyxiate. Did he at least tell you why?”

“Only senior officers know.”

Despite his mental shields, Morgan could see Nikolai’s companion thinking all sorts of choice swear words for the captain, barely holding himself back from blurting it all out loud in a mutinous rage. Strong emotions were always the most difficult to block.

“Don’t tell me this has to do with that wizard friend of his again,” a third crewmember offered.

“Technomage,” Nikolai corrected.

“Same thing. Does this have to do with the wizard? I don’t trust that guy, and I never have.”

 _There’s a technomage on this ship?_ Morgan wondered. That was  really odd. He’d never met one personally, but Psi Corps intelligence reports before the Crisis had said all the technomages had left the galaxy. There weren’t supposed to be any left.

Morgan wasn’t even entirely sure what the technomages really were – the order had always been highly secretive – other than people it was best not to mess with.

“All I know,” said Nikolai, “is we’re in hyperspace and way off the beacon.”

 _Well, this certainly isn’t how I expected to die,_ Morgan thought, dryly. He considered for a brief moment that perhaps the captain had planned this as a way to kill him personally, but then dismissed the idea – Gideon hadn’t been involved in the Crisis, he had no bones to pick, and he certainly wouldn’t kill his entire crew just to off Morgan Butely, whom he’d never even met. No, those were just his old Psi Cop instincts kicking back in. Once learned, such paranoia was hard to unlearn, and a Psi Cop didn’t make it to fifty unless he or she was more than a bit paranoid.

He pushed down his fear. Maybe the captain had a method to the madness. If he didn’t, they were all dead, and Morgan was along for the ride.

He found Matheson in the hallway, wrapping up a conversation with the captain, who was just walking off. Matheson, a young Asian man, looked to Morgan with terror in his dark eyes.

His fear had a comfortably familiar source – Morgan himself.

“So, uh, Mr. Jones, welcome to the Excalibur,” Matheson said, eyes on the floor as they walked to his quarters. Another of Rosaki’s ideas, Morgan mused – all compliance officers with the Bureau had to go by the name “Jones” while on the job. The Senate told the telepath population this was done in order to make compliance scans “less personal.” It was bullshit and everyone knew it; the policy merely created another obstacle for anyone who wished to file complaints against him or his colleagues.

Morgan nodded, but remained silent until they reached Matheson’s quarters.

“I notice we jumped shortly after I arrived. I hope we’re not going too far off the beaten track,” he began, once they were safely inside, the door locked. He picked up a small figure from Matheson’s shelf and examined it, a black soapstone Love Knot from the Central African Bloc. A gift from someone special, perhaps? Matheson’s file listed him as unmarried.

“A little,” Matheson said, sitting.

Carved of a single piece of stone, the figure represented unity and unbroken love. Was Matheson a sentimentalist? Morgan wondered. He despised sentimentalism. And how could a telepath keep a token of “unity” after the Crisis? A token of “unbroken love”?

“We'll drop you off at a rendezvous point as soon as we're done,” Matheson continued, bracing himself for the scan. “It'll be a few days."

 _A few days?!_ Morgan thought, behind his tightest blocks. _A few days in hyperspace off the navigational beacons?!_

There was no telling where the currents of hyperspace would carry the ship. It was suicide. There was no way to alert the Bureau (or the Senate) – a signal would never carry that far in hyperspace. What would the Bureau conclude when he didn’t show up for work – for days, weeks, months?

He had to know what the hell was going on.

Morgan showed no expression, simply nodded. “You know lieutenant, you've become something of a role model to a number of telepaths back home. Many of them have dreamed of being career military. You're the first to have a real shot at it. So you will understand that we need to be even more strict, even more thorough given your position.”

“Yes sir. I under-”

Morgan scanned him. Matheson started to shake and cry out with pain.

“Just try and relax… no one likes deep scans, they’re painful, uncomfortable, sometimes even embarrassing. But necessary.”

Much as Morgan had feared, the lieutenant was clean. Squeaky clean. He was the perfect little lapdog.

Matheson was up on the bridge every day two hours before the captain, and still on the bridge when the captain tucked in for the night. Gideon gave him no real responsibility – he’d never even been on an away mission, let alone led one, even though he was the executive officer of the _Excalibur,_ and he’d never given an order, no matter how minor, that wasn’t directly from the captain himself. He’d never even attended a daily mission briefing, because the captain never wanted him there. Matheson was only a parrot – he repeated after the captain or communications officer, even when everyone in earshot had already heard. The captain had only ever put him in charge of one thing…

Morgan couldn’t believe it.

Tracking down the source of a sewage leak?

By crawling personally through the access and maintenance tunnels? The first officer?

The crew had been faced with an alien first contact, and Gideon had sent his first officer to crawl through maintenance tubes all day?[1]

And Morgan thought his job was shit.

But at least he found out where the _Excalibur_ was headed.

“The Well of Forever! Interesting destination.”

 _The captain didn’t actually tell you this was his destination, did he?_ Morgan ‘cast.

“Sir, that’s duty related information-”

“It concerns me because I’m here while all of it’s going on.”

_Because if he plans to kill me with all the rest of you-_

“Dammit, you have no right-”

He did have the right, of course.[2] He had the discretion to go through any of Matheson’s memories from the past six months; beyond that, he was in hazy legal territory. Memory wasn’t a data crystal – Matheson could have been thinking yesterday about events in his childhood; did those memories count as the “in last six months” or not? So the regulations were more pragmatic – Morgan wasn’t allowed to reference, in his reports back the Bureau, any events more than six months old.

There were no “infractions” he could see during those six months, without going out of bounds. For someone so clean, Matheson was sure acting tremendously paranoid.[3] In the recent memories Morgan could see, Matheson was a puppet, a little “feather in Gideon’s cap,” just as Rosaki had claimed. He was on the _Excalibur_ so the captain could pass himself off as a champion of telepath integration, while in actuality, putting his XO in charge of nothing more than tracking down a leaky sewage pipe.

Gideon was nothing but a run-of-the-mill mundane bigot. A telepath, he had apparently believed, would be “uniquely suited” to this disgusting task because as such, he must also be in possession of an extraordinary sense of smell, perfect for the task of tracking down shit. Matheson had tried to correct him, to no avail.

Of course it made no difference – Gideon was doing him an “honor” by letting him serve here in the first place.

But the _Excalibur_ had bigger problems. Gideon wasn’t merely a stupid bigot; he’d become dangerously unhinged from reality.

First, he was no longer in control of the ship. The technomage – Galen was his name – had, with the captain’s permission, taken over the _Excalibur’s_ navigational controls, routing them all through his own vessel, docked somewhere aboard. No one could change the _Excalibur’s_ course now but him.

They’d been hijacked.

Lovely.

Second, the technomage was leading them to certain death. This so-called “Well of Forever” was a fantasy – Morgan had heard such stories before, just as old sailors used to brag about sea monsters and mermaids. It was a mythical place like Camelot or Atlantis. Who could honestly believe that somewhere deep in hyperspace was a mysterious “well,” with breathable air all around it, where beings dwelt who would answer the deepest questions of pilgrims’ souls, if only those pilgrims could find their way? Even Matheson wasn’t sure it was real.

As the story went, no one who found it had ever returned. How then, had anyone lived to tell others about its existence in the first place?

It wasn’t just a fairytale – it was delusion. Gideon had been charged with a serious mission – finding a cure for the plague, with alien help. What had the technomage done to the captain to convince him to turn over control of his ship?

No, it didn’t matter – it was too late, now.

And Matheson wasn’t even concerned about any of this yet. He was only concerned about his damn scan!

Well, fine, if that’s the way Matheson wanted it.

“My job gives me the right to look back six months,” Morgan said. “And at the moment you would do to be more concerned about your job, lieutenant. Because I can see more than a few mistakes you've made along the way.” It was a lie, but what else could be say? _You wanted to be the exception – nice try?_ Telepaths still lived and died by the immortal, fickle hand of normal politics. There were no exceptions, and there never would be.

“Yes,” he told the frightened lieutenant. “Most disturbing indeed.”

But he didn’t plant the infractions.

 _Maybe I’ll do it later,_ he thought. There was, after all, no rush, now that they were off the beacon, lost in hyperspace.

It wasn’t that he liked Matheson – toady telepaths made him sick. He didn’t care if Matheson lived, or if he died of the plague back home. And he had nothing against changing memories _per se_ , for the right reasons – he’d done that many times during the war.

For the Corps.

Not for normals. Normals had no right.

Nor did he care about saving Matheson's career - he didn't like the idea of telepaths serving in EarthForce, taking orders from normals. The Corps should have been recognized as sovereign, military and all. But those battles had all been lost, figuratively and literally. Dreams of true telepath freedom – freedom from mundanes – had been drowned in millions of gallons of tears and blood.

He couldn’t bring himself plant the infractions simply because he hated Rosaki and her committee more than anything in the universe. She hadn’t really saved him; she’d merely condemned him to a different prison, one without visible walls.

 

[1] _Visitors from Down the Street._ I couldn't make this stuff up!

[2] Which Matheson later admits in the canon conversation with Gideon that we don’t directly see here, because this is from the Psi Cop's point of view.

[3] Because the Psi Corps strategic command center was destroyed by insider job, and Matheson was the insider...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There really is a black soapstone love knot (from Africa) on screen, and the Psi Cop picks it up, so I wrote around that. ^_^


	3. Chapter 3

“Captain, do you have a moment?”

The _Excalibur’s_ joyride through hyperspace had given Morgan a chance to catch up on paperwork, but he still had a more unpleasant job to do, and decided to get it over with sooner rather than later.

He stepped into the doorway of the captain’s office, where Gideon sat alone at a table. The captain was perhaps twenty years younger than Morgan, lean and fit.

“Not really,” Gideon said, shaking his head in mock disbelief, as if to say, “wow, I can’t believe this,” and waving Morgan inside.

 _Oh_ , thought Morgan, _that’s how we’re going to play, are we?_

Some mundanes respected Psi Cops and the work they did. Others would give him a hard time, just because they could.

Morgan stepped inside. “I just wanted to let you know I completed my scan and I found some… grey areas.”

“Maybe you found what you wanted to find,” snapped Gideon, accusatorily. “Maybe you’re just a little too eager for that next promotion.”

 _My promotion?_ Morgan wondered, in disbelief. _Look at my gray hair. Does he think I’m some fresh-faced kid?_

The mundanes of the Earth Alliance Bureau of Investigations – EABI, pronounced “eebee” – used promotions to manipulate his younger colleagues, playing them against each other like starving dogs fighting over a scrap of meat. Mundanes knew they had young P12s over a barrel, since there was no other legal work for telepaths of their strength and inexperience. They’d do anything – EABI would give them a quota, expect them each to turn in ten telepaths a month for “infractions,” and they’d eagerly comply. Turn in more people, win more favors.

With the end of the war and the folding of the old MetaPol – what was left of it – into the mundane-controlled EABI, the young telepaths they “hired” became the perfect weapons of terror against the rest of the telepath population. They had no parents, no family, no Corps to guide them, no honor, no traditions, no schooling, no elders to set them on the right path. They were young, angry, desperate, and utterly devoid of hope for a better future. The plague didn’t help things, either.

But Morgan was too old to be bought with promises of “promotions,” with shiny tokens and pins and meaningless titles. He had to serve his new masters, or else he wouldn’t wake up one morning. He was too experienced – and too dangerous – to let live otherwise.

“Lieutenant Matheson has used his abilities to sense emotions on the parts of certain individuals who have come through here in the last few months, caught the random stray thought. No serious breaches of conduct. But enough that he may be recalled for further questioning and training.”

He hoped Gideon would be smart enough to catch what he was really saying – that Matheson had become a political inconvenience to the Senate, and that this would be his cover story for the recall. Morgan would do his duty and file his reports with Rosaki, let her try get Matheson back to Earth – but it ended there.

Passive aggression was the only weapon against her that he had left.

“I can’t allow that,” snapped Gideon. “He’s needed here. He’s answerable only to me.”

“He is answerable to the Senate Committee on Metasensory Abilities first. Above even you, captain.”

Surely Gideon knew this, right? Morgan wondered. How could he have a telepath as his first officer and not know? The laws were crystal clear – Matheson was a telepath first, and an EarthForce officer second. He certainly wasn’t Captain Gideon’s personal pet parrot.

Morgan tried again. “In anyone else these would be small enough to overlook.” _Not infractions at all, in truth._ “But Lieutenant Matheson has a higher requirement.”

 _You get what I’m saying, captain, right?_ he wanted to say.

“That sounds like discrimination to me,” Gideon said, standing and getting in Morgan’s face, self-righteous and cocky as a rooster. “Holding one person to a higher standard than the rest?”

Morgan blinked – was this guy for real? Was he actually trying to lecture a telepath on the meaning of “discrimination”?

The same Captain Gideon who never invited his first officer to a daily briefing or on an away mission? The same Captain Gideon who routinely gave Matheson impossibly short time frames to complete tasks, simply for the pleasure of watching him scramble around trying to impress him? The same Captain Gideon, who only the week before, had ordered Matheson to spend all day crawling through maintenance tubes, looking for a sewage leak – simply because Matheson was a telepath, and as the captain, he could get away with it?

And who had told Matheson he was uniquely suited to tracking down shit, because he was a telepath?

Morgan started to lose his patience. “It seems you and Matheson share something in common. He’s the first telepath to make lieutenant, and you’re the first donkey to make captain.”

“You’d better watch yourself, Mr. Jones, or I will have you thrown in the brig.”

“For what, my charming personality or my dashing good looks?”

“Leave my office immediately or I’m calling security.”

Gideon reached over towards a call button.

Morgan left. Gideon wasn’t worth it.

 _I’ll file my report to Rosaki,_ Morgan thought, _and get the hell off this ship and back to Mars as soon as I can. Let that pompous mundane clown become someone else’s problem._

And if Gideon was Earth’s best hope against the plague, everyone was doomed.

 _I’ll show him!_ he could feel Gideon thinking, from behind. _Matheson’s mine, and he’s not going anywhere! I’ll show him who’s boss!_


	4. Chapter 4

When the war ended, Morgan found himself in the bright light of an interrogation cell, his feet chained to the legs of the metal table, his chair bolted to the floor. A burly guard with a stun rod stood in the corner, ready to deliver him pain if he “didn’t cooperate.”

Morgan had already learned the hard way that trying to conceal his naked hands from view – even shackled together under the table – was considered “not cooperating.”

The interrogation room smelled like piss.

“I’m going to ask you again,” his bearded interrogator said, patient as the devil. “Where is Mr. Bester?”

“I told you already, I have no idea. I tell you this every day.”

“We don’t believe you.”

“Then don’t. I don’t care.”

The guard shifted his stun stick menacingly.

“You wanna sleep in a real bed?” asked the interrogator. “You want a blanket? You ever wanna eat a real meal again?”

“Not especially,” Morgan quipped. “I’m fond of dog food, come to think of it. Tastes kind of like your mother.”

He barely saw the guard move in – and woke up moments later on the duracrete floor, air knocked out of his lungs, the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. His whole body felt like it was on fire, but he didn’t give the interrogator the satisfaction of hearing him scream.

It was only pain. He’d felt worse.

Fuck mundanes.

“Where is Mr. Bester?” the interrogator barked down at him, his figure partially blocking the bright ceiling lights.

“No idea,” Morgan murmured, spitting out blood. “Kiss my ass.”

“Where is Mr. Olean?”

“I told you, I don’t know!”

“You commanded one of his prison camps, and you don’t know where he is?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Morgan rolled over to face the wall.

“Get off the floor, you disgusting piece of shit! I’m talking to you! You will look at me when I’m talking to you!”

The whole interrogation process didn’t really make sense, Morgan thought. They should have just scanned him, but they didn’t – they deprived him of food, they made him sleep on the floor (when they let him sleep at all), they hit him with stun sticks, they made him go around bare-handed – but they never just scanned him.

To do so, he figured, would mean trusting the telepath who did the scan, and EABI trusted no one, especially not a telepath. A telepath might sympathize with Morgan and lie to cover for him, or might even erase or plant evidence, depending on which side of the conflict he or she had supported.

So, day after day, the mundanes had held Morgan in solitary confinement, on drugs to suppress telepathy. They beat him when they felt like it. Morgan asked for a lawyer, but none ever came. The days ran and blurred together into a formless haze of sleep deprivation. A screen in the corner of his cell played a continuous loop of footage of Corps troops being killed in battle, ending with the final fireball that had destroyed the Corps’ strategic command headquarters – killing Morgan’s wife – and had ended the war.

Morgan wondered what EABI’s strategy was. How much did they already know? How much did they honestly not know?

Had any of leaders of the true Corps survived the war and evaded capture? Or was this a trick of false hope? Were the very people they asked him about – Bester, Tuan, Olean, and others – in cells right down the hall?

He knew that trick. He’d used it himself.

There was no day or night in the prison – the lights were always bright – and time became formless. He could be anywhere. The facility was probably on Earth, Morgan figured – he would have recognized the lower gravity of Mars – but he couldn’t completely rule out an off-world station or colony with similar gravity, real or artificial.

And he couldn’t feel anyone because of the drugs. No one was real anymore. The cell, too felt unreal – the walls all a uniform, dull grey.

And the whole prison smelled of piss.

One day, a different interrogator came by. A bald man, South Asian. Too much cologne. Again Morgan found himself chained to the table, but this interrogator took a different tune. He offered Morgan a real meal, and even let him eat it, albeit with naked hands still shackled together.

The good cop, Morgan mused. Another old trick.

He should never have touched the food, he knew – it was a concession of power – but hunger strikes were much easier said than done. After several weeks in prison, sleeping in his own soiled jumpsuit, watching an endless loop of the Corps’ defeat and his wife’s murder, he almost didn’t care anymore that his hands were naked. He couldn’t be any more humiliated than he already was.

“Bester was captured last night,” the interrogator said.

Morgan didn’t react. It was probably a bluff. The interrogator wanted to see his reaction – surprise, disbelief, horror, something that would give clues as to what he knew.

So he didn’t react.

“He placed you at the prison camp in Brazilia. Said you commanded it, under Olean.”

“Maybe,” said Morgan, “maybe not. Scan me and find out. Oh that’s right, evolution skipped you. My condolences to you and the Neanderthals.”

“Mr. Butely, you’re facing dozens of counts at least for murder, torture, and the illegal altering of prisoner’s minds. If even half of what we’ve heard about you is true, you’re never leaving this prison alive.” He paused waited for a response. There wasn’t one. “My colleagues would like nothing more than to see you hang. But I’m going to give you one more chance, to cooperate, out of the goodness of my heart.”

Morgan laughed.

“This is funny?”

“Yeah. You’re a joke.”

“I am?”

“You and the rest of mundane-kind. OK Mr. Good Heart, since you’re obviously here to make me some kind of offer, let’s hear it. I could use the entertainment.”

“Testify against Olean. You’ll walk out of here a free man.”           

“Look, Cologne,” Morgan replied, “Can I call you that? Since you obviously bathe in the stuff – I’m Psi Corps. I was born Corps. The Corps is my Mother and my Father, the only family I have. And I’ve spent my entire life defending that family. I’ve paid prices you can’t imagine. And now you have the gall to come in here and ask me to be a traitor, to stab my parents in the back. If you know just one thing about telepaths – right-thinking ones, that is – it’s that we don’t betray our family.”

“Is that so?” The interrogator smirked. “Your so-called family doesn’t agree.” He tossed Morgan a data pad, and it hit the metal table with a loud clack. “See this? Here’s what your men told us about you.”

Morgan expected to read a list of lies, some half-ass story EABI had invented to trick him into denying it. Oh, sure, a few things would be drawn from confiscated Psi Corps files, and other sources, but it was going to be another ploy.

His face fell.

The data pad told the truth. Morgan swallowed. There was extensive data on the camp and its treatment of prisoners, including on the hundreds that Morgan had ordered executed. Someone had talked to EABI after all, or someone had been scanned. There was far, far too much detail.

“They’ve already turned state’s evidence against you,” continued the interrogator. “Game over, Butely. You’re finished. They’ve already turned you in. Your family has already stabbed you in the back. You’re all alone. And you don’t have any friends left, other than me.”

Morgan hadn’t slept in so long, it was hard to think. Would his men really have betrayed him? If they had, then Cologne was right, he’d spend the rest of his life in prison. They wouldn’t even offer him the option of death of personality – he was far too well-known, and that device couldn’t alter his P rating. Even if they erased his memories, chances were good he would quickly rediscover his old self. It was safer to keep him locked up forever.

Morgan scrolled through the documents on the data pad. Could it still be a bluff? he wondered. The rules of evidence excluded the results of scans from use in court – it was hearsay – but there was nothing to stop EABI from using the scan of one prisoner to coerce a confession out of another. He didn’t put anything below them.

Was everything on the data pad inadmissible? Was this another ploy to scare him into agreeing to testify?

Morgan was all alone, and on sleepers. He had no way to know the truth.

Mundanes should never be able to lie to telepaths, he fumed – to Psi Cops, no less. It made him sick. He should have been able to crush this interrogator like the bug he was.

His family was dead. His wife was dead. His children were dead – killed when rogues bombed the Teeptown school in Geneva. His friends were dead. His whole world was dead.

And now they wanted his soul, too.

The interrogator reached over and took the data pad back from Morgan’s naked hands. “Testify against Olean and I’ll get all the charges against you dropped. In fact, I’ll even get you a job with us. We need P12s in the new Bureau of Telepath Integration.”

“Me? Working for you? Taking orders from mundane scum? I hate you. I hate you more than you can ever possibly understand.”

“You want to spend the rest of your life in here?”

“I think the place has charm,” he quipped, “don’t you?”

The interrogator put the data pad away in his jacket pocket. “My authorization to make this deal comes straight down from the Senate itself. If you cooperate, you can have anything you want.”

“You have nothing I want. You’re about a century and a half too late.”

The interrogator shrugged. “Then you’ll spend the rest of your life looking at these grey walls. Maybe, if you’re lucky, in twenty or thirty years they’ll let you see the sun.”

“I’m not a traitor. Fuck off.”

“Butely, I don’t have to do this. I have the authorization to make this deal with you, but there’s nothing in it for me.”

“Oh? No promotion?”

“Olean is already going down, with or without you. We have other witnesses to his crimes lined up to testify against him, just like they’re ready to testify against you. They’ve taken the deal. Don’t be a fool.”

“You think even on sleepers I can’t smell a lie? …Even over the stench of that cologne?”

The interrogator shook his head. “You can’t save anyone by remaining silent. And you can’t play martyr for the Corps. The Corps is dead. It’s over, Butely.” The interrogator stood. “There’s only one question left for you to answer – do you want to spend the rest of your life in prison – on sleepers – or as a free man?”

Morgan said nothing.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” said the interrogator. “You have one chance. Think it over. Choose wisely.”

The interrogator left. Morgan watched a spider slowly making its web in the corner of the ceiling, and knew there was no way out.


	5. Chapter 5

Morgan awoke to the feeling of being watched.

“Computer, lights!”

He bolted upright in his bed on the _Excalibur_ , and saw the technomage standing silently in the center of the cabin. He held a tall staff. All but the stranger’s hands, and his mostly-bald head, were concealed by a long brown cloak.

Morgan silently cursed himself for his own stupidity. If the technomage had complete control over the ship’s navigational controls, _he obviously also had complete control over the vessel’s locks._

How could he have been so careless? He could have slept in his own shuttle.

He blinked, eyes adjusting to the light.

 _I’m not dead yet,_ he mused, _so maybe he hasn’t come to kill me._ No one would allow a Psi Cop to wake up before trying to kill him.

Morgan lightly scanned the intruder, to size him up and find out his intentions. Galen wasn’t a telepath, but Morgan could tell he somehow felt the scan nonetheless. Morgan sensed no hostility from his visitor, but he didn’t understand what he saw, either.

The technomage’s mind was foreign – human in some ways, most even, but changed. A chill went through him. Galen had paid a tremendous price, made an enormous sacrifice to become a technomage, had undergone some excruciating process that had altered him on every level, physically and mentally. Atomically, even, if such a thing were possible.

Morgan hadn’t fought in the Shadow War, but during the Crisis, he’d scanned telepaths who had. He’d buried those memories long ago; the mere thought of what those telepaths had seen still gave him gooseflesh. Galen’s mind felt like those memories, leaving Morgan with the aftertaste of something terrible, ancient and powerful.

And scars. _There were so many scars._

He was a man, not a Shadow ship. It made no goddamn sense.

He was still a man… right?

Morgan wasn’t completely sure.

Only one thing was clear – the technomage wasn’t someone to mess around with. If the two men got into a fight, Morgan wasn’t sure who would win.

It had been a very long time since Morgan had faced down an opponent who was at least his equal, man to man, eye to eye. To be on the safe side, he put his money on Galen. The technomage was, after all, armed with that staff. Morgan hadn’t been allowed to carry a weapon since the Corps’ surrender.

“All right, what do you want?” Morgan asked.

The technomage met his gaze. “I came here to ask you the same question.”

But his meaning was entirely different.

“OK,” Morgan said, rephrasing, “why are you in my room in the middle of the night?”

“Who are you?” Galen asked back.

“Morgan Butely. Former Psi Cop. You broke into my quarters to ask me my name?”

“What’s your mission?”

“I’m here to conduct Lt. Matheson’s biannual compliance scan for EABI. At least that was the plan before you and the captain decided to take this ship on a joyride through hyperspace, looking for Atlantis.”

“Where are you going?”

“You’re the one in control of the ship’s navigational systems,” snapped Morgan, “so why don’t you tell me?”

The technomage made himself comfortable in one of the plush chairs near Morgan’s bed. Clearly he wasn’t going anywhere. “Who do you serve?” he asked.

“The Senate Committee on Metasensory Abilities.”

“Who do you trust?”

“No one at all.”

“What do you want?”

There was of course, the obvious – _I want you out of my quarters. I want locks that do their job. I want to return to civilization._

But that wasn’t what the technomage was getting at, Morgan knew.

He sighed. “I want things to go back to the way they were before the war,” he said, unsure why he was telling this to his uninvited guest. “I want my wife back. I want my children back. I want my family back, do you hear?”

The technomage didn’t move.

“I wish that the Crisis had never happened. No, I take that back. That it happened all right, and we’d won back the rights they stole from us a hundred and fifty years ago. That EarthGov had been forced to recognize the Corps as a sovereign government. I want justice. I want-”

“You want your honor back,” Galen said, flatly.

“Why, yes. How astute of you.”

“You sacrificed your honor for your freedom.” The technomage nodded to himself. “And now you have neither. Interesting.”

“‘Interesting’? That’s what you have to say?”

“It’s a story I’ve heard before, in my travels. And your history is not a secret, you know. The others might not know who you are, but that’s only because they don’t know where to look. Or don’t want to look. Tell me, Morgan – may I call you that? – what would you do with that honor, if you could get it back?”

Morgan didn’t know. He’d never even allowed himself to ask the question. He didn’t deserve his honor back.

He paused, and looked away for a moment.

When he looked up, Galen was gone.

But the question still hung in the air.

*****

Morgan sighed and got out of bed. He opened the porthole and looked out into the blazing red-orange swirls of hyperspace. Deep inside, he knew the truth – he was a selfish coward, no better than the rogues he’d fought. He should have died for the Corps during the war, or served out his life sentence in defiant pride.

The Corps had tried to raise him right. He’d failed.

He’d rationalized the decision: _Everyone is going down anyway. They’ve lined up against me. We’ve already lost the war, there’s nothing left to fight for. What good can I do for my people from a prison cell for the rest of my life?_

But it was a lie. He thought back to the lessons of his childhood, and wished he could talk to his teachers once again. He wished he could tell them he was sorry. He thought he’d understood their meaning – always put the Corps first. He’d killed hundreds to protect the Corps, and overseen the detention, interrogation and torture of thousands more. The echoes of their screams still kept him up at night.

The Corps had had no choice but to go to war, but no one cared about the truth anymore. Not in these times.

He still could have told Rosaki to go to hell. He didn’t have to take the deal. He didn’t have to take the stand and stab his parents in the back.

He closed the porthole. His family was dead, literally and allegorically – the rogues and their mundane sympathizers were responsible for that much. But the Crisis hadn’t taken his honor. He’d done that to himself.

For what? So he could become the Senate’s bitch? Doing bullshit “compliance scans” and drowning in paperwork?

There were no free telepaths, he mused darkly. There never had been, and maybe there never would be. The schools were closed. The jobs were gone. Wearing gloves outside of Teeptown would get you beaten half to death. It was hard to have faith in anything anymore.

And knowing this, the technomage had still dared to ask him what he would do if he could get his honor back. Morgan shook his head. The only telepaths with honor were locked up in prison, or still on the run. Everyone else served mundane masters now. And many, like him, to win their so-called freedom, had paid a price too horrible for words.

“Magic Well in hyperspace, ha,” he grumbled to himself. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Sentimentalism. Wizards. He crawled back into bed. He was much too old for fairytales.

But he still couldn’t sleep.

_Who are you? Who do you serve? What do you want?_

_Where are you going?_

Morgan had once had all the answers. He’d been raised in the Corps. Everything had always been clear – unquestionable, even.

_I am Morgan Butely, Psi Cop. I serve the Earth Alliance, and I serve the Corps. The Corps is Mother and Father. I want to protect my people, no matter the sacrifice. I am going bravely in the footsteps of Psi Cops before me._

Now, he didn’t know anything. Spiritually, he and the rest of telepath-kind were as lost adrift as the ship, off the beacon, floating through hyperspace, without purpose or direction.

Since the war, he had been asked so many questions – from interrogators, prosecutors, reporters. Everyone wanted to use him or vilify him. Everyone had an agenda.

But Galen was different. He operated on a level above the politics of normals and telepaths. He didn’t stop by Morgan’s quarters for answers; he came to leave questions instead.

Why? Morgan wondered. What was in it for him?

Eventually, drowsiness took over. As he slowly fell asleep, for just a moment, Morgan began to believe. Was the ship really lost? he wondered. Did Galen really know where they were going? Did he have a larger plan? Could this “Well of Forever” actually exist as it did in legend, drifting in hyperspace along the intersection of interstellar lay lines, a mausoleum to races long extinct? A place of goodbyes?

In that magical place, could Morgan learn how to mourn his family? Could he find forgiveness for his failures?

If he had the chance to leave one token at the Well, what would it be?

And if he could ask one question of the Universe, what would he ask? And would the Universe answer him?


	6. Chapter 6

The headlines said it all:

“ROTTEN TO THE CORPS!”

Olean’s defense team begged for delays, for continuances, for more time to put together their case. _The government has accused our client of war crimes!_ they said. _How can we put forward a meaningful defense in merely three months?!_ Justice, they argued, could not possibly be served by the rushed process of this kangaroo court. _If our client were a normal, we would have had years to prepare our case!_

But it was to no avail. The mundanes only wanted a swift conviction, the facts be damned. The courts had never been fair to telepaths, and they weren’t about to start now.

The trial lasted for weeks. One by one, the guards and staff of the camp testified against him – barehanded, naked, humiliated. They threw their former commander under the metaphorical train, spouted bald-faced lies, parroted whatever script they’d been given to say, and one by one, they received their acquittals, their suspended or mitigated sentences, their parole papers.

The interrogator had been right about one thing – the prosecution didn’t really need Morgan Butely. Short of direct divine intervention, Olean and all the others were going down. Morgan’s testimony was merely the final death blow, the theatrical spectacle that sealed the deal and provided the best the footage for the cameras. He made the headlines of ISN and Universe Today.

The mundanes ate it up like candy.

 _See?_ they told each other, smug over their morning coffee, smacking the paper with the backs of their hands. _Look’ee here. I told you those Psi Corps sons of bitches stood for nothing but their own asses. Here’s your proof. Just wait till they find Bester!_

Sooner or later, Morgan knew, his own life would probably end in assassination. It wouldn’t even matter who pulled the trigger – a former rogue, a former prisoner, a former Corps loyalist angered by his betrayal.

So be it. He deserved it.

The war wasn’t “over,” he knew. It would continue, quietly, for decades. Telepaths would disappear, abducted by EABI to make the quotas, or for supposedly violating the sacrosanct “privacy” of mundanes: the “price” to pay for “freedom,” as the mundanes repeated, in justification of their “new rules.”

Telepath children – without schools – would die on the streets, trafficked, abused and starving. Adults, hopeless, humiliated, and broken in ways mundanes could never understand, would quietly commit suicide in one way or another. And telepaths would keep killing each other in every major city across the Earth Alliance. The shards and factions of what used to be a family would quietly murder each other in the shadows – a body here, a body there, an eye for an eye. Settling old scores. Another corpse floating in the river.

And good riddance, the mundanes would say. One less mindfucker around. Whoever he was, he probably deserved it, anyway.

*****

Morgan awoke still on the _Excalibur_ , and wondered if the mysterious visit of the night before had been a dream. He checked his door – it was still locked, from the inside. The visit had to have been a dream, he decided, as he got dressed. Hyperspace was a weird place. Sailors saw sirens and demons among the swirling vortices.

Here there be dragons.

He went to find himself something to eat.

“Of all times,” Matheson mumbled to himself, stepping onto the lift, fuming mad.

“Pardon?”

The lieutenant looked warily over at Morgan. “He offered me the away team,” Matheson said. Both men knew that Matheson was referring to Gideon.

“That doesn’t sound so bad to me.”

“That’s not it,” Matheson replied. “In EarthForce, promotions come from command experience. As first officer, by rights I should be in charge of all our away missions, but the captain always goes himself. This is the first one he offers me.”

“The one that doesn’t exist, you mean.”

“No no, if it does exist. Regulations prohibit telepaths from going out into hyperspace, even in an EVA suit. You know. If I go out there, there’s no telling what would happen. I could scan everyone by accident.”

Morgan nodded. Exposure to hyperspace magnified a telepath’s abilities. A good little suck up like Matheson had to follow every normal rule, no matter how oppressive or repressive.

“He was actually encouraging me to go out there,” Matheson continued, eyes on the lift doors, “telling me how amazing it is to float around in hyperspace. I reminded him about the regs, why I can’t go. ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘well, I guess there’s always a price to pay for something.’” Matheson gave Morgan a _Can you believe it?_ look.

Another crewmember entered the lift, and Matheson abruptly fell silent, verbally and mentally. Moments later Matheson stepped off, heading for the bridge.

Morgan wondered what price Matheson had had to pay for the honor of kissing Gideon’s ass.


	7. Chapter 7

Morgan was in the cafeteria when he heard, and felt, the sudden shouts behind him.

He spun around in his seat. The ship had come to a stop, and out the viewport windows could be seen a large, sparkling, flying island.

Everyone in the cafeteria ran over to the windows to get a look.

_No way_ , Morgan thought, and pinched himself. _No way._

He slowly stood and made his way over to the crowd, and watched as an unfamiliar vessel undocked from the _Excalibur_ and headed for the island, followed moments later by an EarthForce shuttle.

_They’re going to scan me ten times back at the Bureau, and still never believe this!_

The whole visible surface of the Well was covered in monoliths, monuments, and sparkling jewels. He couldn’t see what was taking place down there, but he could make out the dots of two figures, and he recognized the feel of their minds – the captain, and Galen the technomage.

_How do I recognize his mind?_ Morgan wondered. _Did he actually visit my quarters last night? Or is this all still part of the same bizarre dream?_

The eerie feeling was completely unmistakable, even at a distance.

The _Excalibur’s_ crewmembers pressed against him, shoving him to the monomolecular glass of the viewport, vying for a spot. “You’ve had your turn,” they shouted at each other, “now move! I wanna see! I wanna see!”

“It’s real! I can’t believe this!”

“If we all stick together,” someone said, “everyone back home will have to believe us! You hear me, everyone? We’re sticking together!”

Morgan quickly found himself enveloped in a cacophony of hopes, dreams, wishes, prayers, and everything else for which the crew could ask the Well. Wincing from the onslaught, he slammed up his mental shields. He didn’t want to hear it, and besides, sacred spaces deserved silence. Damn mundanes, ruining everything.

He watched the two figures on the surface. So the legend was true after all. What was it the technomage had asked him… _Who are you? Where are you going?_

_How do I mourn my family?_ he wondered. _How do I move on? How do I atone for my failures? What would I do with my honor, if I could get even a scrap of it back?_

Gideon and Galen didn’t spend very long at the Well. After a few minutes, the two shuttles lifted off from the surface and made their way back again to the _Excalibur_.

_Well?_ he asked the Universe. _Do I get my answer?_

There was no reply.


	8. Chapter 8

Morgan spent the rest of the morning in a daze. He was a pragmatic man, a man who trusted little to faith, to magic, to sentimentalism. Was he wrong? Was there perhaps a whole universe of possibilities out there, a world that he had never considered? If the Well of Forever was real, what other legends also held truth?

In only a day and a half, his world had been turned upside down.

_The vessel was hijacked by a technomage. We flew off the beacon into the wild currents of hyperspace. I was certain we would die out there. Then we found the mythical Well of Forever._

No one would believe him. Ever. They’d think he’d lost his mind. They’d think the memories had been implanted by someone with an agenda to cover up what they’d really done with him for those three days.

That’s what he would think, were he in their shoes.

Well of Forever, goddamn, he thought, if any of his men had ever come back with that story, he’d have them removed on the spot. Clearly their memories – and the rest of their minds – had been compromised.

Right?

Perturbed, shaken even, he stepped into the bullet car to go back to his quarters. He only wanted to be alone, to think things over in peace. He would get no peace at all when he made it back to the Bureau.

Should he get a trusted colleague to remove the memories? he wondered. It would be a hell of a lot safer than the alternatives. Who could he trust to do the job? He absentmindedly fingered the edges of his briefcase, lost in thought, considering his options.

The bullet car was mostly empty, save for a few crew members at the far end, and one alien woman, seated across from him. Morgan had never before seen a species like hers – her skin was blue, and her eyes bright yellow.

She watched him with those intense, eerie eyes. He wondered where she was from, and how she’d ended up on the _Excalibur._

The two of them, both so far from home.

The bullet car took off. She stared at him intently.

And suddenly, he was assaulted by a wave of pure hatred. Her mind was just as unfamiliar as the rest of her, but her single-minded determination was clear.

 _I’m going to blow up this ship,_ she thought, with singular focus, _and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do to stop me._

He knew that feeling intimately – it was how so many rogues had felt right before they detonated some explosive that killed dozens, or even hundreds of their kin and kith. Strong emotions were the hardest to block – but human or alien, some things looked the same.

His eyes widening with panic, he snapped out of his reverie. His old Psi Cop instincts kicked into gear. After all the events of the last two days, now they had one more problem to worry about – alien terrorism?!

He didn’t bother trying to scan her to determine her motives – revenge for something was all he could immediately discern – before he was out the door at the next stop, running as quickly as his legs could carry him. Her motive didn’t matter. First, they’d stop the attack – he’d gotten a very clear image of the bomb’s location. Then they’d catch her – the _Excalibur_ was lost in hyperspace. It wasn’t as if she could hide for long.

Maybe, he wondered, there was plan in all this. Maybe by placing him there at that moment, to see her plan, and in the right place to stop it, the Universe was offering him a way get a bit of his honor back.

He wished he could have stopped the plot on his own – it would have been faster – but regulations prohibited it. She wasn’t human, let alone a human telepath, or likely even a citizen of the Earth Alliance, so even as an agent of EABI, he had to work within the ship’s chain of command. As he ran, he wondered if the delay created by those regulations would cost him his life.

Fuck it.

He ran straight into Gideon’s office.

“Captain!” he shouted, dropping his briefcase into a chair.

“Wha, wha… what is it today?” asked Gideon, irritated. “Is my office suddenly Grand Central Station?”

“I wanted to warn you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He turned around to pour himself another cup of coffee.

“There’s a bomb on your ship! It's attached to the jump engines, set to go off any time now. She's willing to kill all of us to get revenge for something or other.”

“And how did you hear about this?” Gideon said. With a smirk.

“Well, I-”

Over the adrenaline, the pieces clicked in Morgan’s mind. Gideon was a terrible, terrible liar, and in his smug satisfaction, he’d blooped his whole plan.

“Let me see if I can pick your brain for a change,” Gideon was saying, with a pie-eating grin. “You got this from the thoughts of a woman, that you saw in the bullet car.”

There was no bomb. It was all a goddamn prank.

“Her name is Dureena,” Gideon was saying. “And I've never seen anyone focus on revenge, and death, as completely as she can when she sets her mind to it. Lieutenant Matheson told me that you probed part of his mind to find out where we were going. A small infraction because you had your own reasons for it, so I figured you'd have even more reason to protect your own skin. You said certain people should be held to a higher standard? What is the standard for a watchman like you, Mr. Jones? Or more to the point, what are the penalties?”

For a moment, Morgan realized, he had actually believed the Universe had given him a chance to do something honorable again, to save lives.

But no.

Mundanes were just fucking with him.

Morgan started laughing.

“You think this is funny?”

Morgan laughed even harder. “You’ve never read the new telepath regulations! This is precious! Captain, do you truly believe the Senate has made it an ‘infraction’ for a telepath to alert the proper authorities when he or she has a good faith belief that a terrorist attack is in progress? Do you think the public would ever support such a rule? This was never an infraction before the war – you think it is now? Of course not, captain. People would die needlessly. Senator Rosaki is many things, but a fool isn’t one of them. Unlike you, apparently.”

“This isn’t about-”

“Oh yes it is. You wanted to blackmail me. Trouble is, I’ve done nothing improper at all, which you would know if you had read the regulations. I do have discretion to look back six months in my compliance scans, and in this case, that happened to cover where we were headed. And it’s not like I wouldn’t have found out in two days, anyway, when we got there. Now let’s talk about you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you, Captain Einstein. Let’s give you a round of applause. You have intentionally faked a terrorist attack on your ship for the sole purpose of harassing – and supposedly ‘blackmailing’ – a duly appointed law enforcement officer, on special mission from the Senate itself. That, surprise!, may actually be a criminal offense. It certainly won’t endear you to EABI.”

Gideon blinked. He hadn’t thought any of this through. Morgan remembered the time in school when he had purposely given his classmate all the wrong answers, thinking he could get away with it. Gideon had the same look on his face as Morgan imagined he must have had, all those years before, when caught by the teachers. The difference was that Gideon didn’t have the excuse of being only thirteen years old. He was the captain of a goddamn starship.

Morgan decided that Rosaki was right – Gideon was a persistent son of a bitch, but a complete dolt.

And he’d gotten to go down to the Well. Not Matheson, who by rights should have at least been by his side, and certainly not the likes of Morgan, or even the rest of the crew.

It didn’t matter. Gideon was probably too stupid and full of himself to understand anything the Well could have told him, anyway.[1]

“You’ve lucked out, though,” Morgan continued, “because I don’t have the authority to arrest you and relieve you of command.” He cocked his head slightly. “Or, for that matter, to drop you to the ground and make you bite off your own toes.”

Gideon paled.

It must be nice to be a normal, Morgan decided, to be appointed to authority even without any merit, and never to have to face consequences, or pay prices.

“Pity. I would have enjoyed that.” Morgan picked up his briefcase. “Tell you what, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll leave this little incident out of my official report back to Earth. The Senate has bigger issues to deal with than a clown like you. But if anyone sees it in my next compliance scan, that’s not my problem.”

Without waiting for a reply, he left. Gideon fumed behind him. No doubt the captain would lie in his personal log. Morgan didn’t care.

 _If not for normals_ , he mused, _what would I do for entertainment?_

 

[1] The same episode says that Gideon would have had the answer to his question, but he “wasn’t listening.”


	9. Chapter 9

Back in his cabin, Morgan tried to write up his report for Rosaki. He hadn’t planted the infractions, so all he had for her was some vague, equivocal garbage about “borderline infractions” and a recommendation that Matheson be recalled back to Earth for “further training.” It was a far cry from the scandal she’d asked him for.

The _Excalibur_ would be back in normal space in a matter of hours. He had to come up with something, and quickly.

As he sat at his desk trying to come up with a plan, he felt a very peculiar telepathic sensation cross the back of his mind, akin only to being in the presence of another P12, except he and Matheson were the only two telepaths aboard, and the latter was a mere P6.

He examined the feeling more carefully, and recognized the signature of the mind brushing up against his mental shields.

_I’ll be damned._

He opened up the porthole and looked out into the dazzling currents of hyperspace. He had to wait a few minutes, but sure enough, the EVA suit came into view. Matheson. With line of sight, Morgan picked up the rest of the story – Gideon had left the EVA suit for him in his quarters and told him to go out into hyperspace anyway.

With Morgan still aboard!

He chuckled to himself, and shut the porthole. So he had his infraction after all. He would tell Rosaki there simply hadn’t been time to do a follow-up scan on Matheson, with the ship so close to the drop-off point in normal space – and the first officer had proved very difficult to get hold of after his little excursion, always indisposed. Nonetheless, this was certainly an infraction that needed urgent follow-up from the Bureau. At the very least, this piece of evidence supported Morgan’s recommendation that Matheson be recalled to Earth for further training, and at worst, some very serious breaches of the rules – and privacy – had taken place, potentially handing Rosaki the scandal she was looking for.

And the best part, Morgan realized, was that Matheson would now become someone else’s problem. In order to increase the impartiality of compliance scans, the regulations frowned on Bureau officers conducting back to back scans for the same person.

By handing Matheson the EVA suit, Gideon had also handed Morgan exactly what he needed, but was probably too much of a fool even to know.

Morgan shook his head slowly and chuckled. Maybe there was room enough in the Universe for miracles, after all.


End file.
